The institutions of house tenancy markets in post-war Western Europe : an economic analysis

Abstract

This study provides an economic analysis of the post-War institutions of the European tenancy markets. Two representative types of market interventions are analyzed: the introduction of compulsory terms in the tenancy contracts and rent control. First of all this study offers a description and an analysis of the recent history of those institutions. The cases of Spain (as a benchmark), Italy, Finland and UK are analyzed more in depth, as examples of "big reformers" during the 20th century, in order to extract some general conclusions about the evolution of the European institutions in the last decades. Then the effects of those interventions are theoretically explored by adapting a model of tenancy markets (Basu and Emerson, 2000). The results show that the analyzed institutions potentially entail negative effects for the European tenancy markets. Those effects are consistent with the tendences observed during the second half of the 20th century in the different european markets.